Striking My Sandwich Chord

In her blog, "I saw That," Ahno describes how she learned to make tiny, itty-bitty sandwiches for her church's coffee hour.  I had not yet eaten breakfast, so the blog got me hungry, and it got me to thinking about sandwiches.



I love sandwiches, though I have eaten fewer of them lately.  Too much bread is not good for me as I get myself into shape, shape other than round, that is.  But still, an occasional sandwich can be okay.



My standard, and I love these, are peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Those are so good, but they are best on English muffins, the muffins with the nooks and crannies in them.  They must, of course, be toasted so that the peanut butter, crunchy is best, melts into those hundreds of nooks and crannies.  My favorite jelly or jam is raspberry, black or red, with apple coming up a close second.  I am considering having that for breakfast after writing this blog.



The typical lunch sandwich is also good, with the main problem being finding the right bread.  the soft, pseudo bread sold in the bread aisles of grocery stores, you know, the bread with soft crusts, soft interiors and difficult to spread anything on for fear of tearing it, is the worst for sandwiches of any kind.



I like a bread with a crust that is different from the interior bread not only in color but in hardness and texture and will hold the bread together.  More and more one must go to specialty stores or really good grocery stores to get bread with any good, hard crust on it.  The bread is the foundation to any sandwich.



Of the regular sort of sandwich, I have several favorites, one of the simpler ones is liverwurst.  For that you just find the good, crusty bread, put a few medium-thick slices of liverwurst on it and smather with a good, spicy deli mustard.  Sure, you can add pickle or onion if you want, but that is only an option, not a necessity.



If you can find a good source of fresh home-grown tomatoes, ham and cheese topped with tomatoes and mayonnaise, with lots of pepper on the tomatoes, is another of my favorites.  This is particularly good on whole-wheat, sourdough, or a light rye bread.  Again, mustard may be used, and it should have bite to it, not like the plain yuck-yellow hot dog style mustard.



For a simple taste, canned tuna is good if you mix the tuna with mayonnaise and spread it on a good whole-wheat bread, add lots of ground pepper to the sandwich and top it off with sliced bread and butter pickles.  The only problem with that sandwich is that my cats are assertively willing to help me to eat it.



So, I got the sandwich stuff out of my head now; Ahno just triggered that as I read her blog.  Now it is off to the kitchen to make my peanut butter on English muffin sandwiches.